The Clairvoyants(67)

“What?” I said. “Me? Weren’t you at Del’s apartment yesterday?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” William shifted his bag to his other shoulder.

It had grown darker, the shadows sifting out from the corridor. A voice was calling me from downstairs—Del. She had somehow gotten inside and was looking for us, tired of waiting in the car. “I’m ready to go home!” she called. I felt a rush of shame—for suspecting Del of her old ways, for doubting William and being such a terrible wife. I wondered if we could go back—despite everything, I told myself I had been happy. We could forget about this and forgive each other.

“I should have known you were as crazy as she is,” he said, under his breath.

I pushed past him, to the top of the stairs. “Del! Up here!”

And then he came for me, his hands gripping my forearms. His expression had altered to one I’d never seen—a dark caul seemed to have slipped over his features. He couldn’t love me. What had I been thinking?

“William, don’t,” I said, and I realized, with a vague disappointment, that I sounded like Mary Rae’s ghost in the encampment. Had this been who she faced when she died—this man, broken and disheartened by something she’d said or done or failed to do? The first time he’d spent the night in my apartment I’d watched him sleep, and his face had seemed a stranger’s.

Del had gotten closer, her voice louder, more panicked.

“This is your fault,” William said, anguished. “What do you expect me to do now?”

He held me at the top of the grand staircase, and I called Del again. We might have looked in the gloom as if we were dancing. His hands tightened on my arms, and I struggled to free myself, and in my struggle my legs tangled with his—the way legs tangle together in sleep under bedsheets, that twining of limbs during sex. We both lost our footing—me sprawling back onto the wood floor, William cartwheeling into the void where the staircase descended. I watched him flail for the banister, and then he fell backward, disappearing as he tumbled, his body curled in on itself. I put my hands over my ears so I wouldn’t hear the sickening sound of him falling, of his landing in a pool of darkness at the bottom.

From below, Del screamed. Maybe she thought it was me.





27




Did it anger me, the summer David Pinney died, that Del had claimed him as her own? The day after I found out, I came upon my mother on the terrace reading a magazine and I told her that Del had a boyfriend.

“And who would that be?” she said, flipping one page, then another. I could tell she didn’t really want to be bothered.

“I don’t know, a boy from the Spiritualists’ camp,” I said. “They snuck off to the barn together.”

My mother bit the inside of her cheek—something she did when she was nervous. She looked up from her magazine. “And what did she say they did?”

“She didn’t,” I said. “I thought you should know.”

That afternoon Del was told she had to accompany my mother to the Prison Store. I had Jane Roberts come over, and we spread our towels in the grass and waited for our other friends. It was a hazy day, the air dense with humidity. The cicadas whined overhead. Jane was sluggish and silly, and I knew she’d taken some of her mother’s pills. My grandmother came out of the house and called to me, and told me she was heading to a luncheon. She had on her pearl earrings, her floral skirt with the large peonies.

“Be good,” she said, as if she knew I would not. “It’s supposed to rain this afternoon.”

She got into her car, and I watched her drive away, the sound of the pebbles crunching under the wheels.

We were swimming when David Pinney arrived. He dove in off the board, and then surfaced and came up to me. I felt as if I’d taken one of Jane’s mother’s pills—flushed and dizzy.

“Where’s your sister?” he said.

The water ran down his shoulders, and his eyes were bright against his tan face. I stared at him, defiant.

“Well?” he said, annoyed.

“She’s not here,” I said. “And you can just stay away from her.”

He laughed, and I watched him swim back to the deep end, a streak beneath the water. He pulled himself up to dangle under the diving board and grinned at me. “Jealous?” he mouthed.

Jane sat on the pool steps, talking to Katy and Paul Grant. Every so often she gave Paul a playful shove. Paul had his cooler of beer, and I swam over to him and he handed me one. David stayed in the pool in his spot, and eventually others arrived, and we got out of the water and started a game of croquet. The wind had picked up, and the sun kept disappearing behind clouds. Over the ninth hole the sky was gray, threatening a storm. I had it in the back of my mind that David was still under the diving board, and I wanted him to watch me, to want me, even, so that I could be vindicated by refusing him again. I drank more beer, and we played the game, the wickets set along the wide lawn. At one point I looked for David, and he was gone. I should have been relieved, but for some reason I was not. I was drunk and wanted the last word. I left my mallet leaning against a tree and went to look for him, stumbling a bit over the hillocky grass.

I approached the barn. The big doors were closed, as they usually were since my grandfather had died. I went in through the side door—a wooden door that stuck in its swollen jamb. I felt the familiar coolness, the smells of the stalls nearby still emanating cow and sheep. The dim light seemed to amplify sound for me and something high and lilting—a girl’s laugh cut off—came through the barn. I guessed it was someone at the pool, the sound traveling between the barn’s slats. The sun kept flickering in and out. I heard thunder, not too far off, and then another sound, rustling—hay being disturbed—and jagged breathing. Once I stepped around to my grandfather’s workbench, I saw David. His bathing suit was lowered, and he worked, panting, furious, between two spread legs. I watched him and the girl, her knobby knees, oddly numb. David held her arms over her head with one hand and I knew the weight of him would have kept her from fleeing. There was no way to tell who the girl was, until I noticed her bathing suit bottom ringing one ankle, Sarah’s orange bikini, the one I’d worn my own day in the barn with David Pinney. It was Del held pinned beneath him.